To find authentic expressions of political feeling amongst the dispossessed élite in Ireland in the generation after the defeat of 1691 is no easy task. Between the treaty of Limerick and the early writings of John Curry and Charles O’Conor in the mid-eighteenth century Irish catholic laymen seemingly avoided committing their political views to paper, for reasons which are not difficult either to understand or to sympathise with. Only amongst the clergy do we find comment of a political nature, but even this on the whole was restricted to reaction to penal laws and persecution and was concerned with the position of the church rather than the laity. Occasionally glimpses of a broader picture emerge tantalisingly from the Continent where correspondents were beyond the range of British control, as in Ambassador da Cunha’s report on Irish conditions in 1710 or in Internuncio Spinelli’s account of 1723, both of which blamed the depressed state of the laity unequivocally on the violation of the treaty.

The first act of the Irish parliamentary session of 1697 provided for the banishment of all catholic clergy exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction and also of all regular clergy. It was the first act since the treaty of Limerick that directly affected the practice of the catholic religion in Ireland, and it was something of a paradox that it should have coincided with the making of peace between William III and Louis XIV. In its early stages the bill seems to have been confined to the regular clergy, and there is some obscurity about its extension to bishops and other clerical dignitaries.

Athough abundant evidence is available for the first few years of the Anglo-Norman invasion, the observance of due proportion in the ordinary textbook of Irish history usually precludes a detailed presentation of the progress of the invasion prior to the arrival of Henry II in 1171. As this has tended to obscure the real significance of the invasion, a careful analysis of the course of events in the years 1167-71 is called for.

As J.G. Simms remarked more than thirty years ago in the introduction to his notable book on the subject, ‘the Williamite confiscation was the last of a series which in the course of a century and a half changed the ownership of the greater part of Ireland’. The Williamite confiscation in Ireland, 1690–1703 was a landmark in the complicated and, till then, much misunderstood history of the subject. In fact, and rather oddly considering the importance of the war of 1689–91 and its consequences, there was no earlier detailed account of the confiscation of Irish land that followed the defeat of the Jacobites at the Boyne, Aughrim, and Limerick; and most references to it were based upon the printed report of the parliamentary commissioners of 1699, in some important respects a highly tendentious and misleading document. Simms based his work upon manuscript sources not previously used: the detailed records of the 1699 commissioners; the records of the forfeiture trustees who succeeded them; and the Books of Survey and Distribution that recorded the ownership of Irish land and its redistribution during the years after 1641. His main general conclusions —

— have provided all later students of the subject with a firm frame of reference within which to examine the details of the settlement.

Late in 1868 the Dublin doctor, author and nationalist George Sigerson (c. 1836–1925) published, under the title Modern Ireland, a collection of widely quoted articles he had written for the Daily Chronicle during the previous year. Among the bewildering flood of Irish commentary on British rule, his was notable for its clear exposition and its moderate tone. From the perspective of the Liberal Party, on the verge of being returned to office, Sigerson’s observations were valuable in representing the views of a moderate, middle-class Irish element which might co-operate in implementing a liberal policy acceptable to all parties in both England and Ireland. His credentials as a nationalist were impeccable, yet he had not been seduced by the Fenian inclination towards violence. The book prompted modest praise from critics and enjoyed a reasonable success in the book trade, going through several printings and two editions.

One man who read the first edition was John Wodehouse, first earl of Kimberley (1826–1902), the immediate past viceroy of Ireland, who annotated profusely as he read. His notes are unusual in that they are extensive (52 of 393 pages were annotated), spread throughout the text, and generally lengthy (averaging twenty words per annotated page). A few involve the kinds of ethnically disparaging remarks to which he was prone. However, the majority deal with substantive issues with which Kimberley as viceroy had had to deal (Fenianism and land improvement) or would be dealing later that year as part of Gladstone’s first government (disestablishment and land reform).

A new edition of Professor Curti's History of Medieval Ireland is very welcome. Though essentially the same book, much has been rewritten : there are additions to the text as it appeared in 1923, and a good deal of detail and some footnotes have been omitted, for which the first edition must be consulted. Other changes are the division of the chapters into headed sections, the inclusion of genealogical tables, and appendices on the Ostmen, the towns and the legal treatment of the Irish.

The merits of Dr.Curti's work are very great, and chiefly his determination to write the history of the whole of Ireland, to rest every statement upon evidence, and to give exact references.

The see of Derry was (until the disestablishment of the church) one of the richest in Ireland, and the success of King William's forces in the north not unnaturally aroused some speculation about the next occupant. It is true that when the siege of Derry was raised Bishop Hopkins was still alive, but his unpopular action in opposing resistance to James's army no doubt helped to persuade the king's ecclesiastical advisers that his health was unequal to the continued discharge of his duties. At any rate, by September 1689, at least nine months before Hopkins died, it was generally known that George Walker was to have the appointment.

The following digest lists accessions to repositories in Great Britain and Ireland during 2013 relating to Irish history and reported to the National Archives: Historical Manuscripts Commission (T.N.A. H.M.C.). This information is also published on the internet via T.N.A.’s website (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) and is added to the computerised indexes of the National Register of Archives (N.R.A.) which are available for consultation at the National Archives, Kew, Richmond, TW9 4DU. Alternatively, searchers may access the indexes to the N.R.A. and certain linked on-line catalogues via the website. Limited and specific enquiries can be dealt with by post, or email ([email protected]).

During a twelve-week period in the late summer of 1828 upwards of a quarter of a million people participated in at least sixty mass demonstrations in the south-west of Ireland. Appearing to erupt spontaneously in response to Daniel O’Connell’s historic victory in the County Clare election in early July, these gatherings grew in size and complexity over the succeeding weeks; by late September jubilant but well-ordered assemblies of twenty and thirty thousand people — many marching in identical green uniforms and with military precision behind bands and colourful banners — were taking place simultaneously in several County Tipperary towns to support O’Connell’s crusade for Catholic emancipation.

Political demonstrations on this scale were virtually unprecedented outside the province of Ulster. While processions and large rallies had sometimes been used to honour important politicians during parliamentary elections, and while they had long been part of civic, military and religious pageantry, they had never before been staged in such a co-ordinated and prolonged fashion. What made these spectacles particularly remarkable, however, was that their participants were mainly drawn from the very lowest ranks of rural society and represented groups which had hitherto been excluded from the political process. The novelty of such people marching so often with uniforms and other military regalia caused widespread bewilderment and alarm. Journalists and magistrates liberally sprinkled their descriptions of the meetings with phrases such as ‘novel’, ‘portentous’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘frightful’, and ‘the strangest scene ever witnessed’. One of them observed that had such displays taken place even a few years earlier, they ‘would not only have been deemed factious but treasonable’. As the meetings swelled, many observers thought them to be the harbingers of a mass uprising.

Modern colonialism, writes Gyan Prakash, ‘instituted enduring hierarchies of subjects and knowledges — the colonizer and the colonized, the Occidental and the Oriental, the civilized and the primitive, the scientific and the superstitious, the developed and the underdeveloped’. Such dichotomies ‘reduced complex differences and interactions to the binary (self/other) logic of colonial power’, and colonial rulers ‘constituted the “native” as their inverse image’. Such perceptions of difference as ‘other’ expressed what ‘civilized’ Westerners believed themselves not to be — but also what they feared they might become, should they lose rational self-control. The ‘other’, writes Eva Kornfelt, ‘threatens the integrity of the self by offering alternative, unrealized, and suppressed possibilities’. As shown by Western fascination with the ‘noble savage’, this process could sometimes produce positive representations. Yet even these expressed the needs of the perceiver rather than the reality of the perceived. ‘Othering’, then, is a complex process, one implying deep cultural and individual needs, which may occasionally result in accurate representations, but more often produces self-justifying positive/negative dichotomies.

In the past historians of the Anglo-Irish union have concentrated largely on the leading political figures. Peel, O’Connell, Gladstone, Parnell, Salisbury, Redmond, Asquith and Lloyd George and their Irish policies have all received detailed attention. For the years following the onset of the great agricultural depression, this tendency has been inevitably reinforced by the turmoil of politics following the Third Reform Act and Gladstone’s attempt to introduce home rule for Ireland.

Gladstone’s dramatic commitment of the liberal party to a policy of home rule for Ireland in 1886 was followed by the Grand Old Man’s two attempts at turning his policy into legislation. The first home rule bill, that of 1886, was defeated in the house of commons and then in a general election: the second, that of 1893, was overwhelmed in the house of lords and then dropped by Gladstone’s fourth government. Though the Gladstonian commitment remained and the liberal party continued to be a home rule party — and though the pros and cons of the union of 1800 remained the major structural feature of British party politics — it was not until 1912 that the liberals did anything further about their major Irish policy. For most of the period 1893-1912 they were, of course, impotent in opposition and consequently in no position to take the initiative on home rule. In 1906, however, they won a landslide victory over their unionist opponents and it is striking that this electoral victory and the great impulse it gave to one of the most dynamic governments in the whole history of British liberalism was not followed, as had the last two liberal victories under Gladstone, by the introduction of a third home rule bill. Had the liberal landslide of 1906 been put behind another home rule measure the whole history of the matter would certainly have been radically different. The house of lords would have been easily overwhelmed; the great advance in constitutional reform for Ireland would have been carried in a spirit of liberal reform rather than of political surrender; the development of Sinn Fein would have been frustrated or at least diverted. But the liberal victory of 1906 was not so used. Home rule was postponed and sidetracked and was taken up again only when the liberal party once more desperately needed Irish votes in the budget election which followed the rejection of Lloyd George’s financial measures by the lords in November 1909. The home rule banner was hoisted afresh by Asquith, the prime minister, in his Albert Hall speechof 10 December 1909 and the third home rule bill appeared in due course in 1912 in direct — and significant — succession to the budget and the parliament act for both of which the Asquith government needed Irish support in the commons.

If the major themes in Irish history during these years were the progressive decline of the protestant ascendancy, the rise of a catholic middle class, the growth of agrarian and urban popular politics and the social and economic consequences of a swelling population, then it would be generally assumed that parliamentary electioneering—at least until the passage of catholic emancipation in 1829—had very little to do with them. Supporters of such an assumption would argue that elections were largely the preserve of an élite—the protestant ascendancy—and that despite catholic enfranchisement in 1793 and the pruning of the most notorious close and rotten boroughs by the act of union, electioneering in Ireland was largely confined to wearisome bargaining between landlords, excessive drilling of freeholders both genuine and fictitious, unbecoming scrambles for Castle patronage and the almost indecent disposal of such ill-gotten gains amongst squads of dependents. Furthermore they might add as a confirmatory postscript, that the disfranchisement of the 40s.

Capital cities play a significant role in interpreting a country’s past and charting its future. In the aftermath of the First World War nine new European states, Finland and Ireland among them, were confronted with the question of how to create a capital city befitting their new status and national identity. Instead of designing and constructing an entirely new capital city which would have marked a clean break from the past, all these states chose an existing city as the capital. This article will examine processes through which two capitals, Helsinki and Dublin, were renewed physically and symbolically to make the political change ‘real’ to people, but also to reinterpret the past and create a ‘teleology for the present’. The aim is to discuss the ways in which the changes, planned and implemented, both reflected and reinforced new interpretations of the history of the city and the nation, and the continuities and discontinuities the changes created between the past and the present. Some elements and versions of the past were chosen over others, preserved and reinvented in the cityscape, while others were ignored, hidden or denied.

Since the late 1980s crusade historiography has shown increasing interest in the periphery of Europe and the less ‘traditional’ crusading areas of Scotland, Wales, Poland and Scandinavia. Consideration of Ireland has formed part of this spread of interest, but, like many other areas, it remains comparatively unstudied. In part, the paucity of Irish texts relating to all kinds of crusading discourages research, as does the comparatively low number of known Irish crucesignati.